Metal Hunters Find a Haul of Thousand-Year-Old Coins Beneath a British Farm

The treasure trove, turned up by a metal detector, includes more than 5,000 coins.

You may not want to give up on that metal detecting hobby after all. Maybe you'll find something really valuable—like, say, more than 5,000 coins from a thousand years ago.

Metal hunters in the United Kingdom turned up the coins at a farm near Aylesbury, a suburb of London. The coins date to around the year 1000, during the reign of Cnut the Great (take care typing that one) and Æthelred the Unready, most famous for his slaughter of the Danes, general incompetence, and destroyed crypt.

The Weekend Wanderers Detecting Club found the coins, which are well preserved and believed to be worth more than $1.5 million USD. It's been called one of the largest caches of coins ever found in Great Britain.